Halloween 2020—a drop of Robert Burns—to add a witchy spell to a confined lock-down generation saved only by Zoom. It was after experimenting with the descriptive French version:
«Le vent soufflait comme à son dernier souffle
la pluie crépitant tourbillonnait dans la bourrasque…»
that I re-discovered the frenetic rhythmic pace in English, like a horse galloping, which the gifted poet created and is fundamental to the power of the words:
“The wind blew as ’twad blown its last
the doubling storm rose in the blast…”
Extracts from Tam O’Shanter
The wind blew as of blown its last
the rattling showers rose in the blast
The speedy beams the darkness swallowed
loud deep and long the thunder bellowed
That night a child might understand
the devil had business on his hand.
Well mounted on his grey horse Meg
a better never lifted leg
Tam sped though mud and myre
despising wind and rain and fire
While holding fast his good blue bonnet
And singing o’er an old Scotch sonnet
But glowering round with prudent cares
lest Bogie-men catch him unawares
Church Alloway was growing nigh
Where ghosts and owls nightly cry
By this time he was passed the ford
Where in the snow the sheep-man smother
Past the bitches and cobble stone
Where drunken Charlie broke his neck bone.
And near the thorn above the well
Where Mungo’s mother hanged herself.
The river Doon pours all its floods
The doubling storm roars through the woods
The lightnings flash from pole to pole
More and more near the thunder rolls
When glimmering through the groaning tress
Church Alloway seems all ablaze
Through every beam lights were dancing
And loud resounded mirth and dancing
Inspiring bold John Barleycorn
What dangers thou can make us scorn
With tuppeny ale we fear no evil
With whisky too we’ll face the devil.
The pints they reeled in Tam’s noddle
Fair play he cared no devils a-doddle
But he Horse stood right sore astonished
Until the heel and hand admonished
She ventured forward on the light and
Wow! Tam saw a wondrous sight.
Warlocks and witches in a dance.
No battalion lent new from France
Hornpipes, jig, strathspeys and reels
put life and metal in their heels.
At the window-bunker in the East
there sat Old Nick in form of beast
A shaggy type, black grim and large
to give them music was his charge.
He screwed the pipes and made them swirl
till roof and rafters all did dirl.
Coffins stood round like open presses
that showed the dead in their last dresses
And by some devilish eerie slight
Each in their cold hand held a light
By which heroic Tam was able
to see upon the holy table
A murderer’s bones in gallows irons
Two span-long unchristened bairns
A thief new-cut from a rope
With his last gasp his gab did gape
Five tomahawks with blood-red rusted
A scimitar with murder crusted
A garter with which a babty was strangled
A knife a father’s throat had mangled
With more as terrible and awful
which even to name would be unlawful..